Gregory of Nazianzus

Gregory of Nazianzus

(Gregory the Theologian). Born around 330, near Nazianzus in Cappadocia. Asia Minor; died there around 390. Greek poet and prose writer. Church figure and religious thinker. One of the most prominent patristic figures.

Gregory of Nazianzus received a brilliant education in rhetoric and philosophy, which was crowned by language study in an institution of higher learning in Athens, where he became a friend of Basil the Great. In 379 he was summoned by the orthodox community to the episcopate in Constantinople, in order to contribute to the struggle against Arianism, and in 381 he presided at the Second Ecumenical Council. However, also in 381, in a situation marked by turmoil and intrigue, he resigned his episcopal office and returned to his homeland. As a theologian Gregory of Nazianzus was a member of the so-called Cappadocian circle, which included Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa. The circle introduced the methods of Platonic idealistic dialectics into theology.

Gregory of Nazianzus’ greatest prose achievements were his funeral panegyrics to his father and Basil the Great. His lyric poetry is distinguished by an intimate and varied intonation. The autobiographical poems On My Life, On My Fate, and On My Sufferings, with their psychological profundity and standard of self-analysis, are on a par with St. Augustine’s Confessions.

An edict was no more than a declaration of intent but on arriving in his capital of Constantinople for the first time, Theodosius immediately dismissed the Homoian bishop, Demophilus, and appointed the Nicene Gregory of Nazianzus in his place.

Gregory of Nazianzus, poet and theologian, well versed in Greek literature and fully conscious of the power of logos in its wider sense, declared that his own mission in life would be to turn "the bastard letters to the service of those that are true.

13) In addition to the large number of his letters that have survived, several other important sources provide biographical information: the early fifth-century ecclesiastical historians Socrates and Sozomen, Basil's friend and fellow student, Gregory of Nazianzus (c.

He describes the Gospel and cultural formations, the end of religious pluralism, the pathos of the university in the case of Stanley Fish, schooling the heart, lessons learned from Yoder, Wolin, Burrell and Wendell Berry, the real state of the secular, and the importance of loving God, the poor and learning from Saint Gregory of Nazianzus.

This influence is clearly summarized in the subtitle of the earlier German edition of this book, The Trinitarian Cosmology of Gregory of Nazianzus in the Horizon of an Ecological Theology of Liberation.

Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, and especially Gregory of Nyssa, whose "From Glory to Glory" was instrumental to my conviction of the universality of salvation through a process by which the Creator continually, inescapably, draws all of creation into darkness (the incomprehensibility of God) and transforming love.

Using family and friendship--two concepts that have been much discussed in recent years--the author focuses on networks, as well as on personal and emotional experiences of three eminent fourth-century theologians: the brothers, Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa, and their close friend Gregory of Nazianzus.

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